Our capabilities are based on decades of grappling with issues like those we now help our clients assess. We have tackled these issues from a full range of perspectives.

Our collective experience includes executive-level positions at numerous large companies, including Apple, Bank of America, Disney, General Electric, General Motors, Kodak, McGraw-Hill, Mellon Financial Services, Wells Fargo, and Xerox. That experience covers numerous industries, including automobiles, consumer electronics, education, entertainment, financial services, information services, media, professional services, publishing, and technology. We have served in key management and board roles, including chairman, outside director, chief executive officer, chief operating officer, business unit president, chief financial officer, and director of marketing, market research, innovation, and technology. We have written many critically acclaimed books and received some of the highest honors given in computer science, consulting, engineering, financial services, journalism, market research and publishing.

As a result of our histories, we start with a roster of potential contributors with exceptional breadth and depth, both conceptual and practical. We then assemble the right team for a client’s particular need.

Members

Chunka Mui is a co-founder and managing director of the Devil’s Advocate Group. Chunka is the co-author of Billion-Dollar Lessons: What You Can Learn from the Most Inexcusable Business Failures of the Last 25 Years. Chunka is also the co-author of the best-selling Unleashing the Killer App: Digital Strategies for Market Dominance. Chunka was previously a managing partner and chief innovation officer at Diamond Management & Technology Consultants and a vice president at CSC Index. Chunka’s personal website is at chunkamui.com. Paul Carroll is a co-founder of the Devil’s Advocate Group. Paul is the co-author of Billion-Dollar Lessons: What You Can Learn from the Most Inexcusable Business Failures of the Last 25 Years. Paul spent 17 years at the Wall Street Journal as an editor and reporter getting about as broad an exposure to the world of business and to senior executives as the paper could provide. The paper nominated him twice for Pulitzer Prizes. He was a finalist once. During his time at the Journal, Paul wrote Big Blues: The Unmaking of IBM, a best-seller published in 1993 about the travails of what was then the world’s leading company. Vincent P. Barabba has held senior strategy and market research positions at General Motors, Xerox and Kodak. Vince also served twice as director of the U.S. Bureau of the Census and is a member of the Market Research Hall of Fame. He is the author of numerous books, including The Decision Loom: A Design for Interactive Decision-Making in Organizations, Surviving Transformation,Meeting of the Minds, and Hearing the Voice of the Market. Vince also serves as the chairman of the board of Market Insight Corporation and The State of the USA, Inc. Robert E. Evanson has been at the helm of some of the largest content companies in the country, including as President of McGraw-Hill Education and chief operating officer of Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Inc. During the course of his career, Bob led a number of acquisitions and divestitures, and oversaw the start-up of numerous business units. He was a senior advisor to Apax Partners, Inc., a $31 billion private equity company. Alan Kay is one of the world’s foremost technologists. He is widely recognized as one of the fathers of the personal computer. He is the recipient of the Charles Stark Draper prize and the Alan M. Turing prize, the highest honors in engineering and computer science, respectively. Alan has held senior research and technology positions at Xerox, Atari, Apple, Disney, and HP. Alan is currently president of Viewpoints Research Institute, where he is leading a 5-year program funded by the U.S. National Science Foundation to invent fundamental new computing technologies. Ken Krushel has deep insight into the digitization of media-related industries. Ken had senior strategy positions at NBC, Paramount and MGM. He has consulted with Warner Brothers, Sega Corp., MGM and Lifetime Television. He was CEO of College Enterprises, Inc., which merged with Blackboard, Inc., to create the largest enterprise educational software company in North America. He also founded Proteus, Inc. a pioneer in marketing specialized subscription-based content for mobile phones. Janey Place was responsible for innovation and strategic investing at Bank of America and Mellon, where she reported directly to the CEOs. In 2007, Janey was recognized by BTN Magazine as one of the top 20 financial services innovators over the last 20 years. She is a co-author of the National Academies Panel book, Engaging Privacy and Information Technology in a Digital Age, and is a former President of the Financial Services Technology Consortium.